In obedience to your Majesty’s order in council, of the 25th January last, I have heard the inhabitants of the town of Lowestoft, in the county of Suffolk, and also the inhabitants of Great Yarmouth, in the county of Norfolk, and their learned counsel on both sides; and do find, that the contention between the said towns concerning the herring fishery, hath depended for a very long time. And that divers statutes have been made in this case by parliaments, and again afterwards repealed. And also divers ordinances and inquisitions have anciently been made and taken, by the king’s commission directed to men of great quality, and afterwards altered and revoked again by the like authority. But there was one statute made in the 31st Edward III, whereby amongst other things it is provided, that none shall sell herrings in any place about the haven of Yarmouth, by seven miles, but in the three towns of Yarmouth, except the said herrings be of ‘their own fishing.’ And I have likewise seen the opinions of several learned judges, some of them conceiving, that the said statute, 31 Edward III is repealed; and others, that the said statute, and also one other Act made in the tenth year of Richard II, for reviving divers former repealed charters, made to Yarmouth, stand still in force bylaw, and are not repealed. And those judges who were of opinion that the same were not repealed, did think it good and convenient to have the seven miles measured, and to begin at the crane key in Yarmouth, where the said fair of herrings is kept (to which place the fishers who sell their fish at Yarmouth must first come, and their cable draw to land, before they deliver their herrings), and so go towards Lowestoft, and where the seven miles do end, to set up some apparent mark to make it known; and did certify the same accordingly to the lords of Queen Elizabeth’s privy council. But the inhabitants of Yarmouth being discontented with the first certificate of the said judges, did procure a rehearing of their cause before them, who having accordingly heard them and their learned counsel, did certify that they did find no cause to alter their former certificate; yet the admeasurement was suspended by reason of the Yarmouth men alledging, that the admeasurement of the seven miles from the key of Yarmouth would be prejudicial to their charters and liberties; and that by the said statute, 31 Edward III, the seven miles ought to be accounted from the utmost bounds of the haven, which they affirmed to have been extended, in the memory of man, a mile beyond where it was then; so that it was directed by the lords of her said late majesty’s most honourable privy council, that there should be seven miles measured from the key at Yarmouth and from the utmost bounds of their haven, where the five ports begin